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IDTCP: An effective approach to mitigating the TCP incast problem in data center networks

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Abstract

Recently, TCP incast problem in data center networks has attracted a wide range of industrial and academic attention. Lots of attempts have been made to address this problem through experiments and simulations. This paper analyzes the TCP incast problem in data centers by focusing on the relationships between the TCP throughput and the congestion control window size of TCP. The root cause of the TCP incast problem is explored and the essence of the current methods to mitigate the TCP incast is well explained. The rationality of our analysis is verified by simulations. The analysis as well as the simulation results provides significant implications to the TCP incast problem. Based on these implications, an effective approach named IDTCP (Incast Decrease TCP) is proposed to mitigate the TCP incast problem. Analysis and simulation results verify that our approach effectively mitigates the TCP incast problem and noticeably improves the TCP throughput.

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Acknowledgments

This work is an extension from the conference paper entitled ‘The Effect of the Congestion Control Window Size on the TCP Incast and its Implications’ which was presented in the IEEE ISCC 2013. This work is partially supported by the foundation funding of the Internet Research Lab of Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the President Funding of the Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant No.CNIC_ZR_201204, and the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant No.CNIC_QN_1303.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Guodong Wang & Ke Dou

  2. Computer Network Information Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Guodong Wang, Yongmao Ren, Ke Dou & Jun Li

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  1. Guodong Wang
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  2. Yongmao Ren
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  3. Ke Dou
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  4. Jun Li
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Correspondence to Guodong Wang.

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Wang, G., Ren, Y., Dou, K. et al. IDTCP: An effective approach to mitigating the TCP incast problem in data center networks. Inf Syst Front 16, 35–44 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-013-9463-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-013-9463-4

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